Neighbourhood plan will be consulted on

John Morgan’s letter in last week’s Chronicle criticises the fact that detailed proposals for Liveable Neighbourhoods schemes were not included in the recent Liveable Neighbourhoods consultation.

The consultation was an engagement process designed to identify which of the 15 proposed schemes were more likely to be supported, separating out those that could be implemented more quickly from those that required more work with residents and a co-design process.

Church Street and the Prior Park crossing fell into the first category and detailed proposals will now be developed by Highways officers, taking into account feedback from the consultation. Specific proposals had not been drawn up at the time of the engagement consultation, which is why they were not included. The proposed designs will go through a formal consultation process which will include residents, emergency services, local businesses etc, prior to implementation, if supported.

My initial letter aimed to answer concerns raised by a local resident and was copied to the Chronicle as his letter had been. I trust that this addresses Mr Morgan’s concerns about transparency.

With regard to his accusation of vote gathering. The Lib Dem manifesto for the 2019 local election in B&NES included a commitment to introduce Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and our primary commitment for Widcombe and Lyncombe, based on the priorities identified by local residents, was to make the ward a place where residents, across the generations, can live and go to work and school in a safe and healthy environment. As we received more than 61 per cent of the votes on the highest turnout in the authority, we felt that we had a mandate to act and Councillor Duguid and I have worked hard to address many of the road safety concerns that residents identified. This is not “cynical vote gathering”, it is councillors doing the work that we were elected to do. Alison Born Councillor for Widcombe and Lyncombe Cabinet Member for Adult Services